From Anu to Saint Anne: Stories of Grandmother Wisdom with Perdita Finn | S7 Ep14

IN THIS EPISODE

Perdita Finn returns to KnotWork for the third time to talk about the grandmothers, the mothers behind the mothers. She shares a story told in her latest book, Mothers of Magic: Summoning the Wisdom of Our Ancestors: discovering a hilltop church built by 19th century Irish immigrants and dedicated to St. Anne, the mother of Mary who holds the magic of being mother to us all.

OUR GUEST

Perdita Finn is the co-founder, with her husband Clark Strand, of the feral fellowship The Way of the Rose, which inspired their book The Way of the Rose: The Radical Path of the Divine Feminine Hidden in the Rosary. They are currently at work on their next book together, Circles Not Lines: Spiritual Community Beyond Patriarchy. To find out more about her devotion to "ecology not theology," visit wayoftherose.org.

In addition to extensive study with Zen masters, priests, spirit workers, and healers, she apprenticed with the psychic Susan Saxman, with whom she wrote The Reluctant Psychic. Perdita now teaches popular workshops on Getting to Know the Dead, empowering participants to activate the miracles in their own lives with the help of their ancestors and recover their own intuitive magic. Her book Take Back the Magic: Conversations with the Unseen World traces her recovery of these lost ways. Her newest book, Mothers of Magic: Summoning the Wisdom of Our Ancestors, is a map back to the maternal wisdom that has always been ours. She lives with her family in the moss-filled shadows of the Catskill Mountains.

Find Perdita at: https://takebackthemagic.com/

OUR CONVERSATION

• St. Anne as folk memory of a goddess of Ireland and the Indo-European tradition: Anu or Danu. They contain "every story and no story.”
• Legends beneath the chapel: buried bones, caves, a mirrored room, and miracle healings that drew pilgrims for decades
• Perdita’s grandmother’s mason jar of saved chicken wishbones. What it means to hold a wish in reserve for real crisis rather than spend it casually
• What gets transmitted between grandmother and grandchild without ever being spoken, including the Calabrian grandmother's sacred "No"
• We’re invited to understand we are being mothered by the dead and by the land, since "the dead and the land are one"

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